


needle and thread

by SearchingforSerendipity



Category: Princess Bride (1987), The Princess Bride - William Goldman
Genre: Domestic Fluff, Love Confessions, M/M, Post-Canon, Rhyming Husbands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-12
Updated: 2018-05-12
Packaged: 2019-05-05 13:57:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14620080
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SearchingforSerendipity/pseuds/SearchingforSerendipity
Summary: The truth was, Fezzik was very glad that Inigo was so awful at sewing. It was always good to do something practical but peaceful, something he knew how to do well and enjoyed, all the more so when it was a kindness to a friend.





	needle and thread

 

 

  
It’s hard to find proper clothing when everything about you is several times bigger and larger than the usual standard of the world. Fezzik outgrew his own father’s clothes early on. His mother, one of the many daughters of the village’s seamstress and tailor, had to remake them to fit him. She taught him how to stitch ripped trousers and add longer hems, how to knit sweaters and socks big enough to keep him warm, and then, later on, designed the special clothes he used in wrestling matches.

Later on, after his parents died and he joined the circus, there were even more costumes to be taken care of. He had been given to understand in rather plain terms that it was in his best interest to earn his place in the troupe. Besides helping set up the tents and carry supplies from town to village to city, the sewing was the chore that most often fell to him.

Ever since his knack for holding the needles and thread between his strong fingers and weave even, nearly invisible ditches became known between his colleagues, all the sewing that needed to be in the circus was dumped by the small space in the back of the tent by the animal cages. There he hid during and before shows, mending his own leather trousers and large vest, the wispy dresses of the trapeze walker and the worn velvet red coat of the lion tamer, the scale-like sequins of the snake whisperer, the magicians’ flashing dark capes.

These days, the cape he mended was still dark, and it was certainly flashed a lot, with plenty of panache and verve. There were plenty of rips - as dashing as capes were, they did have the unfortunate tendency to get stuck in door handles and oars and, even, enemy swords. Life as a pirate captain was hell on clothes. It’s just as well Fezzik was here to do it, because Inigo had never quite understood that a needle wasn’t simply a tiny sword.

“I do know how to do stitches,” Inigo argued, as he was wont to do sometimes; they’d had this conversation before. “I’ve done it before.”

“Yes,” Fezzik said patiently, considering a rip in the seam of Inigo’s cape. “I know.”

Early on in their partnership with Vizzini, after they had faced the particularly skilled and very numerous guards of a German treasury, Fezzik seen Inigo stitch a long scratch with the ugliest, most lopsided stitches he had ever had the bad luck to behold. He’d almost heard his grandmother’s voice tshsking in the ether.

He’d gone over to Inigo, and quietly asked if he could maybe help, and Inigo had eventually ceded his pride. They’d tarted talking, talking properly, something they never quite had before, since they had not known each other more than two months. That was gone they’d become friends, and how Inigo started going around looking much less shabby and patched-up. The truth was, Fezzik was glad that Inigo was so awful at sewing. It was always good to do something practical but peaceful, something he knew how to do well and enjoyed, all the more so when it was a kindness to a friend.

“Do you?”

“I don’t mind. I like to keep busy.”

  
“You are much too kind. Can I be of any help at all?”

Both compliments and rhymes buoyed his spirits like little else. Fezzik smiled. “Bring in the candles closer before we go blind. Would you pass me the black thread and small sewing needle, please? ”

Inigo opened the lid of the worn tin box of biscuits on the low table and lifted his eyebrows. The biscuits had long since been eaten, but the box had been converted as a sewing kit, filled with spools of thread, pieces of fabric, yarn and wool, needles of all sizes and types. To say that it was cluttered was more than a small understatement. “Certainly, if only they are possible to find.”

“Check behind the purple yarn I have yet to wind.”

Inigo rummaged a little, and took out the black thread to match the midnight-dark color of his cape. The needle took more work. He pulled it out with a victorious noise, but squinted at it in the candlelight.

“It this the one?”

“Just the right kind,” Fezzik assured. Inigo, used to assisting him, held the spool while Fezzik pulled out the right length, offered the small scissors for him to cut it before tying the end.

The black clothes and cape and mask were the uniform of any self respecting Dread Pirate Rogers, as Wesley had told Inigo before sailing of into the sunset in his small barge with Princess Buttercup. But also, while there was little to be done about Fezzik’s easily distinguishable size and features, but the Captain Roberts ensemble conferred convenient anonymity.

So Inigo wore the cape and the clothes and the mask, if only around other ships – it was much too work to keep the whole thing all the time. He suffered terribly at noon under the harsh sunlight reflected in the ocean’s surface, one of the reasons why they tended to prefer attacks at night.

That had been the cause of the present rip. They had approached and bombed a merchant ship only once before the moon peeked out from behind a cloud and the other ship’s Captain saw whose flag fluttered in the warm wind. A quick surrender - most of their boardings went like that. Fezzik hadn’t expected a pirate’s life to be so peaceful.

This time it was a Dutch ship, coming in from the Cape, sailing low in the sea level with how heavy with goods it was, gold and ivory. Bolts of fabrics, linen mostly, some silk, impractical and lovely, tinted in grass-green and saffron-yellow, dark-blue wool.

Most of it went to Fezzik, of course. Fezzik rarely took his own share of the loot but he did so love soft things. Smooth sheets and comfortable fabric for every clothing. He was generous too, so the crew didn’t resent him for having choice pick. Even if they did, they would know better than to show the Captain so. Captain Roberts was, after all, quite Dread, and everyone knew how loyal he was to his first mate.

As everyone also knew, the Dread Captain Roberts left no survivors. At least officially, that is. Another lesson taught by Wesley, who knew all the good places to leave captives, without either causing their death or weakening the great myth of the Dread Captain Roberts.

No weakening had been done tonight - they had locked the captain in his cabin, threatened the crew into submission, taken the rowdiest mariners into the brig, towed the ship, and were now headed towards the closest secret island filled (and, perhaps unsurprisingly, these being merchants after all, thriving) with previous prisoners.

And then, when crossing the gangway back into his own ship, Inigo had tripped in the dark and ripped his cape in the ship’s railing.

Luckily, it had been so dark and Fezzik had grasped him so quickly back to his feet that no one had really seen the misstep. Except Fezzik, but that didn’t count. He hoped it didn’t count to Inigo, but maybe it did, because he kept staring at Fezzik, and then looking away, and then pacing around the captain’s cabin.

It was a little distracting, all the more so when Inigo sat down very still, just looking at him. Usually Fezzik felt comfortable around him, but Inigo’s stare could be rather intense, and he was being rather insistent in the way that meant he was slowly winding down towards a certain goal.

Fezzik nearly prickled his finger when Inigo broke the quiet. “Rhyming aside,” he started, and had to stop when Fezzik snorted. His lips twitched, before sobering. “Do you really not mind? Really?”

“No, Inigo.”

“Really really, Fezzik?”

“Really really,” Fezzik said once more, fighting the temptation to sigh. It was late, and his eyes were tired. He narrowed them, checked the stitches back and front and unwound some more thread.

He stopped sewing then, because Inigo laid his gently hand was over his, his eyes fixed on his face. He squared his back into even more of a straight line than it always was; Fezzik knew what it looked like when he was gathering his courage.

“You don’t have to keep busy,” he said. “It’s alright if you like it, but you don’t have to do anything you don’t want to. I know you didn’t like fighting for Vizzini, that you only did it because you didn’t want to be alone. And I’m sorry you did end up alone. But we’re here now, and we don’t even have to fight all that often. You don’t need to feel like you have to be useful. You’re not going to be alone. Except when you want, but when you don’t, I’m here. My friend, I never want you to be afraid, but much less of –.”

Fezzik put down his needle. ”Inigo,” he interrupted, and turned his hand so he was holding Inigo’s. Some of the ever-present coiled tension drained off Inigo’s shoulders. He seemed genuinely relieved, pleased even.

Quite on impulse, Fezzik kissed the back of his hand. Lightly, and only for an instant, but there was an ocean of intent behind that peck, the universal ranking of true love kisses was ratcheting in that instant, and that sort of it thing tends to shine through.

When he looked up Inigo’s swarthy complexion had gone decidedly pink around the cheeks.

“I really really really know,” Fezzik managed to say, his own cheeks burning up.

Slowly Inigo’s face changed from stupefied surprise to cautious delight to something fiercely bright. And now Fezzik was smiling too, a small bashful grin that grew into a warm beam.

“Oh,” Inigo said, dazedly. “That’s good to know. That you know. And I know you know. It’s good.” Their fingers entwined together naturally. It was not the first time, but this was different, not any less comfortable but new. Then Fezzik was leaning forwards in the chair, then Inigo stood up. They were nearly even, they were nearly touching.

Their first kiss was a kiss for the ages, the scale of true love kisses was going mad for good now, the proverbial kiss-barometer breaking. They didn’t care about that, not in the least: Fezzik kept breaking into giggles and setting Inigo off too, their noses bumped, someone’s elbow hit the wall. And the cape fell from Fezzik’s lap as it acquired a new occupant. It was gathering dust quickly on the floor, the needle was lost forever in between the cracks in the ship’s floor, the thread was unwinding in a mess everywhere, but they didn’t care about that either. They were still smiling even while kissing, so it was a clumsy beginning, a wonderful beginning.

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> come say hi to me on [tumblr](http://searchingforserendipity25.tumblr.com).


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